Josh Feinsilber is the founder and CEO of Gimkit, a strategic game designed to assist learning in the classroom. The game is appealing to students because it lets them earn “currency” to win prizes. Gimkit has remained ad free, opting instead to offer subscriptions for more complex game packages. Gimkit also has team games available. It is designed to be used across many different subjects and even languages.
Josh Feinsilber created the game for a class project in 2017. After receiving good feedback about his project, he began to meet with the teachers and students at his school to make revisions based on their experiences and recommendations. Gimkit became wildly popular in just a year by word of mouth from teachers and students. Gimkit games are now played in over 100 countries by over 700,000 students. In 2019, Josh Feinsilber expanded his project and began working with Jeff Osborn. Together they worked on rebranding Gimkit, formerly known as Gimlet, and expanding their product to help shape and improve education. In an interview Josh Feinsilber has shared how he has learned through the process of creating a business. He said “Gimkit has shown me the importance of powerful education moments. Creating and running Gimkit has been the most educational experience I have ever had, and seeing students use this little game I made as a school project has shown me how awesome it feels to help students get more engaged in the classroom.”
Sources:
https://pglsinc.com/gimkit-a-new-game-in-town/
https://medium.com/gimkit/whats-next-for-me-and-gimkit-948a3459d275
Gimkit is a great way to get kids to review for an upcoming exam. I know personally in high school my teachers had used this game multiple times, and it made the experience a lot more fun. Getting education to become a fun experience can be challenging, but through the innovative nature of this game it accomplishes that feat.
Gimkit is something I have found to help impact my learning. It is a very fun game, and it is really interesting to hear where it came from. Honestly really helped my personal learning in high school. I think it is a great example of play being turned into value. Josh came up with a great way to have fun in the classroom and teachers are always looking to make school more exciting. It doesn’t take much more than little fun to create a lot of value sometimes.